It's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.mostly silly, with a 20% chance of science

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Tuesday Pet Peeve: Careless North Americans

A certain phrase has been on my mental pet peeves list for a while. Every time I hear someone say it, it jars - it's not one of those UK*/North America differences where both ways are equally valid and I just have to get used to it, because the North American version is clearly just plain WRONG!

However, for some reason I've never felt quite strongly enough about this issue to blog about it (not on a Tuesday, anyway).

Last week, though, I was catching up on some (very) old podcasts and found that John Cleese has already said everything I wanted to say on the matter, much more eloquently than I ever could:

(ETA: Eva pointed out that David Mitchell has had a very similar rant on this subject

Love it!)

HA!

Now I have something to which I can refer people who challenge and/or mock me for saying "I couldn't care less". I will continue to say it this way because a) I'm still British, damnit and b) it's correct, whereas the North American way really doesn't make any sense (sorry).

A plague of dead parrots on people who carelessly say "I could care less" when they don't care at all!

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*I say UK just because I'm not 100% sure which version is used in Australia, New Zealand, or Ireland, although I suspect they all say "I couldn't care less".

24 comments:

ha, this has been a pet peeve of mine for ages too. Is this a mistake specifically made by north americans? I'm in Canada and hear people say the correct and incrrect version probably about equally as often, and have never understood how people do not realize that the phrase is incorrect

I've probably heard Canadians use both versions, but I only really notice when they say "I could care less", because like I said, it really jars... I have persuaded my (Canadian with British parents) husband to switch after pointing out to him why one version is wrong. "I'd honestly never thought about that!", was his stunned response, and now he's a true convert :)

I can confirm that the phrase is "I couldn't care less". But then again we're a bunch of inbred sheep farmers on one side of the Tasman Sea and the refuse of her majesty's prison system on the other. So what would we know?

I've never heard people say this wrong, but I'll pay more attention now. It doesn't make sense at all no to care less than 0. Although in some cases ... you know, when you really could care -100 about something really insignificant...

I'm a non-careless North American! The phrase "I could care less" just never made any sense to me, as the excellent argument by John Cleese illustrates. It's ridiculous. Perhaps some in the States do it just to be less British. Poppycock, I say. Then again at times, I've been convinced I'm a Brit trapped in an Americans body because really-what self-respecting Southern belle would prefer a nice hot cup of Earl Grey over sickeningly sweet ice cold tea? That would be me. Cold tea disgusts me... as does "I could careless". Now excuse me while I go shore up the defenses.

EGF, I'm glad there are North Americans fighting the good fight! I guess I really just don't notice when people say it correctly...

GMP, glad to hear it! I don't know why people won't believe you; most non-native English speakers I know have a much better grasp of the technicalities of the language than I do, because in the era in which I went to school in England, we weren't taught formal grammar. My parents were both teaching modern languages at the time and would get incredibly frustrated with repeated whines of "why do the French/Germans/Spanish have to have all this grammar? We don't in English!" I picked up all the rules I do know just from reading practically non-stop from the age of 4 onwards!

PiT, I like the alternative version. Clear and unambiguous!

Eva, thanks for that! Excellent stuff (including the bit about herbs). I'll add it to the post as soon as I've finished answering comments

(and yes, there is clearly some caring about this subject going on :) )

Nina, the video that Eva linked to mentions that caring a negative amount is still caring - like the difference between love and hate!

Let me know if you hear any infractions!

Pika, gotta love the blogosphere for collecting that kind of info!

BB, LOL! Well done on the hot tea preference too :)

I'm never sure how much the anti-Brit sentiments expressed from time to time in certain segments of the blogosphere actually reflect the feelings of US citizens in general. Although I'm still wondering if it was my Union Jack helmet that got me singled out for special attention during my bike ride down to Seattle... (and by special attention I mean "I got shot at").

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